CFT: FreeBSD Package Base

[David Chisnall]

On 01/05/2019 09:31, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
> They are experts and they are paid for their work. I am not. I am 
> maintaining a few packages and the reality is I don't know what they 
> need in base. Till these days I don't care about this kind of 
> dependency. I am not system developer or programmer and I think there 
> are more than just me who see this as a kind of problem.
> So in this case, pkg base gives me nothing but more work on those packages.

This is a UI problem that is largely addressed by sane defaults.  For 
example:

- Ports for libraries default to depending on libc and libm, with 
poudriere warning if you link to anything in /lib that you don't have a 
dependency for.

- Ports for programs default to depending on a large subset of base 
(probably not things like vi, but probably including sh for anything 
that may want to call system()).

I would a few oddball things will have other dependencies that will need 
explicit handling (for example, a GUI tool for network configuration may 
depend on ifconfig), but I'd expect you to spend a lot less time 
worrying about base system dependencies than you waste from the ports 
system's refusal to make plist generation automatic.

David